January 10, 2025: It's never been a better time to look into the skies. Plus, a new global temperature record and how math is improving cookie baking. —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | | Amanda Montañez; Source: Copernicus Climate Change Service | | | • 2024 was the hottest year on record and the first year to top 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. All 10 of the hottest years have been in the last decade. | 3 min read | | | • Biochemist Katalin Karikó recounts her journey from a childhood in communist Hungary to her Nobel-winning work on mRNA. | 37 min listen | | | • This week's California wildfires could drive the state's insurance market--already teetering on insolvency from years of wildfires--to collapse. | 4 min read | | | So far, 2025 is off to an eventful start. And something tells me we're only getting warmed up. Whether you're an astronomy buff, casual stargazer, or just want something to think about that has nothing to do with human toil and struggle on Earth, the celestial calendar has something to offer you. Astronomer and columnist Phil Plait has assembled a list of the space viewing events he's looking forward to in 2025. I've highlighted some below, but do check out Plait's full schedule here. All of these descriptions are oriented from the perspective of someone in the U.S. Northern Hemisphere. Venus cycling: This January is the best time all year to look at Venus, which you can spot in the southwestern sky after sunset. Tonight the planet will reach its greatest "eastern elongation," the point in its orbit when, as seen from Earth, it's as far from the sun in the sky as it can get. After today the planet will start to move in between Earth and the sun, getting larger in apparent size and brighter even as it looks more and more like a crescent (Venus has phases like the moon does).
March 29: There will be no total solar eclipse this year ( last year's stunner was enough to last us a while). But on March 29, a partial eclipse will be visible at sunrise for people in the northeastern U.S. (Maine will get the best show of all the states: as much as 80 percent of the sun will be covered by the moon there). Check out where future solar eclipses will be viewable with this map. | | | August 12: The two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, will be only one degree apart, visible in the east before sunrise. They'll be close together in the days leading up to and after the event, so you can track their changing positions if you look at them each morning.
Meteor showers: The August Perseids meteor shower is a reliable show. But this year it'll be outshone by the moon. Instead, look out for the peak of the Eta Aquarids shower in early May–there should be about 10 to 30 shooting stars visible per hour. And on December 13 to 14 the Geminids will peak, with up to 100 meteors visible per hour.
What the editors say: The coming years will be a bonanza for astronomical observations with telescopes and observatories peering deeper into the universe than ever before. Since 2021 the James Webb Space Telescope has been upending what astronomers thought about the earliest days after the big bang. Last year, Europe launched its Euclid telescope to focus on the dark universe. And later this year the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will begin photographing the full sky every few nights, observing the dark objects orbiting in the far reaches beyond Pluto. "Astronomy serves to remind us that we are part of something much grander than ourselves—that the turmoil of life on Earth, both its wonders and its tragedies, isn't all there is," write the editors of Scientific American. "By peering at the stars, we can see that our lives are a small piece of a great and mysterious working." | | | A JWST photograph shows the NGC 602 star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud. ESA/Webb, NASA and CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) | | | If you're enjoying all the science we cover in this newsletter, dive deeper with a subscription to Scientific American. You'll have access to all our articles and will be supporting crucial science journalism. | | | • Sure, the holidays are over, but why should we stop baking? If you've ever rolled out cookie dough and cut it into shapes, you've surely noticed how much excess dough the typical cookie cutter leaves out. Using a 3-D printer, Clara Eugenia Garza-Hume, a mathematician at the Institute for Applied Math and Systems at UNAM, made a cookie cutter in the shape of a kite and dart that fit together in a way that the tiles are periodic--what mathematicians call tessellating. In the last several years, several tessellating cookie cutters have come to market. "If you can find a tessellating cookie cutter and if you involve your children, you can take the time you would have spent rerolling dough to tell them about science and math," she says. | 5 min read | | | A tessellating cookie cutter, such as this one in the shape of a kite and dart, creates a nice pattern and uses up more dough than other shapes. Megha Satyanarayana | | | Test your science knowledge with this week's science quiz. Or challenge yourself with our hard Sudoku or today's Spellements puzzle. Remember to send any science words that are missing from the puzzle to games@sciam.com. This week, Paul from California spotted ulnas, which is the plural form of the word for the thinner and longer forearm bone, the ulna. Well done. | | | MOST POPULAR STORIES OF THE WEEK | | | • The Math Mystery That Connects Sudoku, Flight Schedules and Protein Folding | 7 min read | • Jumping 'Numts' from Mitochondria Can Be Fast and Deadly | 4 min read | • HMPV Cases Are Rising Across Asia, but Experts Say Not to Panic | 4 min read | | | Wildlife enthusiasts are co-opting various social media platforms to build communities that promote accurate information about snakes, help people identify species, and debunk viral myths about the animal. The Facebook group "What kind of snake is this? North Texas Educational Group" has more than 176,000 members. Administrators of the groups may be snake experts or amateur "snake nerds" who help members identify snakes from photos they post in the group. "This group has been the first time in my life that I think I'm making a real difference," says Herpetologist Mark Pyle, who created the "What kind of snake is this" group. Many users report the groups have transformed how they view snakes, and has helped injured animals get help or rescue. | 10 min read | | | Mark Pyle created a Facebook group to educate people about snakes in North Texas. Jeff Wilson | You may have already spotted Venus this month, it's been unusually bright in the low sky after sunset. A telescope will give you the best view, though the lower something is in the sky and closer to the horizon, the more interference you'll get from atmospheric gases in your view. Some filters can correct for this on telescopes. Tonight should be the best opportunity to view the planet clearly, so let me know what you see! | I wish you clear skies for star and planet gazing this month and beyond. I'd love to see your astronomical photos if you have them. Send to newsletters@sciam.com. See you Monday! | —Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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